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The British nobility is divided into tiers or ranks, known as the peerage. The roots of this hierarchical system date back around a thousand years; it began to gain a defined structure (as with many things in British history) after William I conquered England in 1066. The peerage has five ranks: baron, viscount, earl, marquess, and duke, in ascending order. And within each tier, superiority is given to the holder of the oldest peerage. So, for example, the Duke of Devonshire is more senior than the Duke of Marlborough because the former title was created in 1694, eight years before...

Cheikh Malek el-Khazen is heir to the House of Khazen, of the Lebanese nobility. He is also the founder of the Khazen Foundation and Khazen.org. He was kind enough to grant me an interview. Could you tell us a little bit about your family's history?The Khazen can trace back their lineage to the 9th century, when they were mainly located in the Levant. They started acquiring lands from the Muslim Shi'a Tribes in Mount Lebanon during the 1400s and mainly focused their exodus in the Keserwan district. This caused the Chi'a to leave Keserwan and migrate to the South of...

Here’s a tip for you: Listening to really, really loud sounds over long periods of time can damage your hearing. Perhaps you already knew that. But a few years back, a group of clever trial lawyers decided they could make some serious money by arguing in court that you are too stupid to know it yourself. They filed 26 consumer-fraud lawsuits in multiple states against Motorola and other manufacturers of Bluetooth headsets. They alleged that consumers were not warned sufficiently about the dangers, and that they “would not have purchased their Bluetooth headsets but for defendants’ false advertising.” That led...

Caroline Kennedy's interest in the U.S. Senate seat now held by Hillary Clinton is making for lots of talk, about whether having the Kennedy name is enough to qualify her for the position. Kennedy, who's 51, has been a very private person until her very public support of Barack Obama, and this week she's saying publicly she's interested. Reaction here in Syracuse: Outgoing Congressman Jim Walsh, honored by the Onondaga County Legislature for 20 years of service to the area, says 'Well, I think you have to earn this." He points to Clinton's tenure and asks 'Why did she come...

Top Republicans in Washington will give Sen. George Allen a few days to take stock of his legal and political options before beginning to pressure him to concede to James Webb. Senior Republican officials and White House aides believe that Webb won the race. Several outside advisers to Allen want him to make the decision quickly; others in his campaign want to make sure that there's no chance a cache of new votes will turn up. One question: when will (will?) the AP call the race? [MARC AMBINDER]

THE SAMURAI AND THE AINU Findings by American anthropologist C. Loring Brace, University of Michigan, will surely be controversial in race conscious Japan. The eye of the predicted storm will be the Ainu, a "racially different" group of some 18,000 people now living on the northern island of Hokkaido. Pure-blooded Ainu are easy to spot: they have lighter skin, more body hair, and higher-bridged noses than most Japanese. Most Japanese tend to look down on the Ainu. Brace has studied the skeletons of about 1,100 Japanese, Ainu, and other Asian ethnic groups and has concluded that the revered samurai of...

Joshua Adam Gardner, 22, visited Stillwater Area High School three times in December and January, posing as "Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, the Fifth Duke of Cleveland" and telling students he was 17 and was interested in attending the school. He also claimed to be 27th in line for the British throne. "Becoming 'Caspian,' I was given respect," Gardner said in a jailhouse interview broadcast Monday on NBC's "Today.""And people ... don't look at you in that way that they would look at a sex offender." "I didn't mean to hurt anybody," he said. Reporters at the Stillwater school newspaper, the...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Some amazing things have caught my attention lately. One thing that really amazes me is the storm of so-called "indignance" blowing about the media after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. Teach your children that God is irrelevant. That people are the products of chance. That morality is self-defined and relative. And that America (read Americans) should be ashamed of their (re-written) national history of arrogance, self-righteousness, and imperialism. And then, when a few of those kids grow up and act in accordance with ALL the things they WERE taught... and when they exhibit a DIMINISHED valuing of human dignity...